Fidelity’s $280B Contrafund Appoints First New PMs Since 1990

Anyone who grew up playing video games in the ‘80s knows how hard it was to beat Contra. 

The same goes for the $280 billion Fidelity Contrafund strategy and portfolio manager Will Danoff, who have been winning since 1990, delivering an average annualized return of nearly 14%. (And that’s without using the Konami Code that gives you 30 extra lives.) But as of last week, Danoff did get some extra help, in a sense. Fidelity’s Jason Weiner and Asher Anolic have joined as co-portfolio managers on the Contrafund. And Nidhi Gupta is now a co-portfolio manager on the VIP Contrafund (the version used within annuities), alongside Danoff and Matt Drukker, who was added last year. Although Danoff has not announced his retirement, the changes are part of a long-term succession plan, the company said.

“Helping Fidelity’s clients invest wisely and retire comfortably has been my guiding light for the past 34 years,” Danoff said in a statement. With the other portfolio managers’ “expertise and help, I am confident we can continue to deliver excellent long-term performance for our clients, in the Contra way.”

Contra Dance

Anolic and Weiner have co-managed Fidelity’s Advisor Equity Growth and Capital Appreciation funds and are complementary to each other, Morningstar equity strategies principal Robby Greengold wrote last week. “They debate every stock together rather than dividing coverage by sector, so they have a fuller understanding of their picks’ upsides and risks. They rely less on Fidelity’s in-house analyst recommendations than some of their peers,” he said.

The $280 billion in assets across all the strategy’s accounts is also a lot for one person to handle, and the two new co-managers will oversee about 10% of the portfolio in the coming months, he noted. There are numerous other portfolio manager changes happening as well, which include:

• Drukker joined Gupta and Danoff as a co-portfolio manager on the $20 billion Fidelity Advisor New Insights.  
• Gupta and Drukker joined Danoff on the $11 billion Fidelity Series Opportunistic Insights Fund. 

Contraindications. “I’ve sort of developed my own style. And you do have to stay flexible,” Danoff said in an interview last year, noting that it has been more difficult to consistently beat the S&P 500, which in recent years has been bolstered by tech gains and survivor bias. “If it was an easy job, other people would do it.”

If anyone does need extra lives, try: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.